o have an 200L tank runnig an fluval 204

have 2 pictus

2 eels

2 clowns

1 bgk

what i want to do is empty tank out take out all gravel to be replaced with crushed coral and give good clean. What are my best options to keep most of water to put back in tank so i dont have to recycle tank, all i'm keeping at moment are the pictus cats, how long should i wait before before adding the chiclids i want to get 5 yellows and 5 of somethin else .

any advice apreciated cheers

Crushed coral in a freshwater tank?? Will that alter the hardness or ph etc? Won't it look awful?

Are you keeping all those fish in the african tank?

I would setup a large bucket or chillie bin or something with water from their tank in it a filter heater etc..

Take your tank outside clean it out stick your coral and stuff in it then move it back inside maybe half fill it stick a heater etc in and let it settle for a while then acclimatize the fish to the new tank, best way to do it is half empty the bucket and just siphon water from the tank into the bucket seems less stressful than bags..

Good luck with the tank, any idea what the "5 something else" might end up being yet?

only keeping pictus cats rest im selling not yet no big hurry to restock it at mo

Crushed coral looks good Its commonly used in african tanks to raise ph and hardness..

Its a crapy pic but I think it looks cool

Sweet well id get rid of the others before sticking the crushed coral in might be less stress on them.. If it was easy to do id just siphon out the old substrate and stick the new stuff in..

mint like blue ones with black stripes do you need shit loads of rocks or just few going to get heap of base rock but dont wana stack it up to roof

I usually stack my rocks right up to give all the fish somewhere to hide

(the most bullied fish usually hang around the surface so I try and have rocks quite high in case one gets beaten up so it hides behind that one not floating on the surface being a sitting duck..) and breed, the demasoni are cool and breed in there but aren't very dominant so I try to give them alot of places to breed because they usually end up getting disturbed and chased around the place.. Its over to you really how many rocks you want to stick in I have seen african tanks with like 2-3 rocks in there but you would need alot of fish to break up aggression..

cool set up what size is the tank and how many fish have you got in there.

Tank is 540L 5 x 2 x 2.. Needs some work im currently making a new stand for it..

As for number of fish who knows I haven't sat down and made a list it would be a heap though and always changing as I pull fish out to put in species tanks to breed them there would probably be 50-60 fish in there

are you running a sump..... cheers ant.

nice tank

There is an overflow for a sump but I never set one up im going to take over flow etc out when I strip down the tank once the new stand is made, filtration is currently an FX5 which is as big and flows as much water as a sump anyway it does a bloody good job

Cheers the tank will be alot nicer on a new stand with proper lighting and the back painted black not that blue colour it is at the moment but im happy with it